QUICK INTRO
Full-Stack Creative; musician, songwriter, producer, coder and ‘new paradigm contemplative’ . Currently slow travelling the world whilst working on music, tech, and ‘intuitive writing’ projects…
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MUSIC | Artist & SONiC Alchemist!
I love music, and I love silence!
When I find that place inbetween the two, there the magic happens ; )
Always on the look out for interesting musical collaborations: send me a message ; )
Singer
Since before I could speak I’ve been expressing musical ideas — I’m told as a perfect pitch infant singing to records. Then it was the Casio keyboard as a toddler composing tunes, and then guitars…
Guitarist
Blistered thumbs was the result of the first encounter; one afternoon, after hours of trying to get my first tune out of an old nylon string acoustic guitar stowed away in the upstairs cupboard…
You know, one things leads to another ; )
Songwriter
And then came songwriting, in my teens. After a few years of exploring guitar instrumental music it was time to move onto writing songs, a journey which never stopped!
Everything changes, nothing stays the same…
Music Producer
As early as I can remember seriously getting into music (around 11yrs) I was recording; messing with gear, figuring out how technology worked and most of all how to capture my spontaneous musical ideas, getting them into some sembalance of order, into something more whole and complete…
It’s a bit like defragmenting your hard drive lol.
That process led me (quite quickly) on a journey through many many recording studios, working with some awesome creatives & technicians along the way, and even designing & building my own studio space in NW England in the early 00’s.
Early Days
Sound engineering began, like all good things do, with a little childish curiosity and some daring experimentation…
by hacking my dads HiFi tape deck with a second tape deck that I acquired from a friend of his, a local electrical repair guy who always had spare tech gear hanging around at his shop…
Combining some cheap dynamic mic, phono cables, my guitar amp, and whatever musical ideas I had going on at the time. Then bouncing back and forth a bunch of times recording whilst performing over what I’d previously captured ‘greater things’ started to emerge. In those days it was all guitar instrumentals inspired by Via & Satriani, and all those kinda guys, melodic shred I suppose you’d call it 🙂
This quickly evolved into FourTrack tape recorders (the first of which was kindly loaned to me by my school Music Teacher during summer holidays — thanks Mr Benson! ). Then it soon became Cubase midi programming on the Atari ST which I’d previously been using for gaming, my good friend and musical ally at the time James Pirt was an incredible Pianist so with his classical music brain he became the sound source for those early midi experiments.
PHILOSOPHY | Writer ~ inward Focused FreeFlow
To make a long story short, writing flows, on the ‘Niagara days’ 14 thousand words per day flows!
It has been this way for a good 12 years or more now, and every time I ‘tune in’ there is always more. An abundance of words.
Doodler
Often sketching and doodling, treasure hunting for underlying patterns & unusual ‘hidden’ answers…
Contemplator
Beneath all the creative flow is this ‘infinite capacity for insight’, really it’s like an engine in there, whirring & delivering all kinds of spontaneous comprehensions…
Mystic / Heretic
I really do enjoy exploring ‘out there’ ideas, things that deeply challenge our belief systems & assumed sensibilities. I love occupying that ‘edge of experience’ which is ‘between the worlds’, exploring what can be explored, regardless of the seeming absurdity!
Call it imagination, day dreaming, or a quiet rebellious curiosity : )
This has put me into affinity with many kindred spirits through the years…
Some of us walk about in an explosion of colour, noise and fury, true evangelists for ‘the invisible worlds’. Others you’ll almost never see or read about, we’re like a silent whisper moving through the hustle and bustle of the city, bringing the old era magnetically to a close.
Maybe you’re one too?! ; )
New Paradigm Ambassador
My relationship with the ‘new age’ and ‘human potential movement’ is a mixed bag…
Now and then there emerges a Gem, one of those souls who embodies the eternal vibe and has the capacity to express it. So these days I enjoy that kind of encounter most of all.
The potential (for us all) is great and at the same time largely untapped, we all wake up and see this sooner or later, though no rush, you have eternity after all.
SOFTWARE | Developer & Designer :Web n’ Audio
For well over a decade I’ve worked on countless Web Bassed projects, Mobile apps for iOS/Andriod, and more recently have begun collaborating on music technology software with my good friend David Hicks over at Analogue Instruments — Naturally I’m looking forward to diving into more of these sound based projects : )
The moment I saw coding (and more recently mathematics) in the same way I intuitively see music, studios full of complicated recording equipment, and reams upon reams of wordy words; well that was when I got inspired by the creative possibilities.
Endless really!
Kontakt Instrument Building (KSP)
I’m proud to announce that I worked on the User Interface and Dev Workflow for The Electron Reactor instrument series with good friend and fellow Sonic Alchemist Dave Hicks over at Analogue Instruments…
If you’re into sound design or looking for new sounds for your next music production I’d highly recommend checking it out!
In a nutshell the ER allows you to dial up and manipulate pure analogue sequences and arrive at production ready sounds in minutes, even seconds!
Sounds that would normally take hours of patching and experimentation to create — believe me I’ve been there MANY times as a producer, the ER can save you bags of time and is super fun to use 🙂
You can grab yourself a free demo of the Ai Electron Reactor plus there is another awesome analogue drum instrument Dave built and is giving away completely free Analogue Drummer – full version here, it’s really a no brainer 🙂
FullStack Web
Javascript, CSS/Sass, HTML, (and ALL the build tools: gulp, webPack, babel, etc),
Cordova/PhoneGap, Telerik & Kendo Ui,
PHP, WordPress, MySQl,
Digital Ocean, Linux